Iran’s denials of a nuclear weapons program are not considered credible in the United States or Europe. It has three major nuclear facilities above ground and is thought to have many smaller ones well concealed below ground. Experts estimate Iran is perhaps two years away from achieving a nuclear bomb.

But Iran is in some ways a more complicated target than Iraq. It is four times as big and has three times as many people. Most experts consider a full-scale ground invasion impossible. More likely, most regional and proliferation experts believe, would be a bombing campaign to destroy the nuclear materials.

According to Kenneth Pollack, a former National Security Council official in the Clinton administration who supported the attack on Iraq, an air campaign against Iran would have to last 30 days and would be in serious danger of not eliminating Iran’s nuclear capability because of its many sites. Such a campaign, he and other experts say, would be likely to unite the Iranian populace, now largely alienated from its government, behind its radical religious leaders and might prove counterproductive.

Other experts, such as John Pike, director of the Web site GlobalSecurity.org, say the administration has no choice but to bomb Iran before the end of next year. If they don’t, he says, Israel will, and that would further inflame the Middle East conflict. ~Newsday